Everything you want to know about playing, accounts, Pro, privacy and GuessTheDot in the classroom.
How GuessTheDot works.
A free online map game. You get a place name and a map full of dots, and click the one you think is right. The closer you are, the more points you get.
Capitals, cities, villages and world wonders per country, plus country hunt. Pro members also get the Population Challenge.
Both. Solo play always works, and you can create a game and invite friends with a code or link, including a separate classroom mode, see below.
No, GuessTheDot is free to play. Pro is optional and adds extra challenges, see Pro & billing.
Anything with a browser: phone, tablet, chromebook, laptop or smartboard. Nothing to install.
12 languages. Switch your language from the menu in the top right.
How places are divided into the five challenges.
Per country, all of its places are sorted by population and then split by rank, not by a fixed number of inhabitants: the biggest 2% become Big cities, the next 9% Cities, the next 9% Small cities and villages, the next 16% Niche, and the remaining ~64% The smallest of places. Because the cut-off is by rank, a category means the same thing in every country: the biggest 2% of Indonesia are the big cities there, just as the biggest 2% of the Netherlands are here.
The ladder is about population and how findable a place is on the map, not about legal or historic city status. A place can have held city rights for centuries and still count as a village here if it stayed small. It works the other way round too: a large modern town without any formal city status can sit in Cities.
A place that lies within 20 km of a neighbour at least three times its size drops exactly one category. Without that rule, a third of the Big cities rounds in France turned into picking the right dot out of thirty overlapping suburbs of Paris, which is a lottery rather than geography. Such places stay in the game, one step lower. Only the two city categories are re-graded this way; villages keep their population rank.
Places and population figures come from GeoNames (populated places only: no historical, abandoned or destroyed places and no city districts), regions and provinces come from geoBoundaries. Population figures follow GeoNames, so they can lag a few years behind the latest census. That matters for a place sitting right on the border between two categories, not for the shape of the ladder.
For some countries the data holds too few places with a population figure (roughly under 50) for a five-step split to be meaningful: dividing them would leave Big cities empty. There, every place lands in one flat category, All places.
No. Those are separate modes that don't work per country and aren't graded by population: capitals, famous landmarks (Wonders, Natural, Man-made) and countries themselves. The five-step ladder only applies to places within a single country. Provinces are their own practice category as well.
Logging in, leaderboards and tracking progress.
Not always for a quick solo round, but you need a free account for a leaderboard spot, saved progress, skins, and to play games with others.
You earn points by guessing well. Public games count toward the leaderboard, class games and private practice rounds deliberately don't.
Cosmetic extras for your dot avatar. You earn coins by playing and spend them under Avatar in the menu.
What you get and how subscriptions work.
The Population Challenge (guess the place and its population), filtering practice rounds by population size, and more Pro perks on the way. See the Pro page for the current list.
You can choose monthly or yearly, cancel anytime, current pricing is on the Pro page.
Yes. Go to the Pro page and click "Manage billing" to change or cancel your subscription.
No, creating and playing a class game is always free, even without Pro.
What we track and how chat is moderated.
Only what's needed to play and track scores. The full breakdown is in the privacy statement.
Chat messages can be reported and are moderated. There are no ads in the game.
On the terms page.
GuessTheDot as a geography lesson.
Ready to try it with your class? Check out the full page for teachers with a step-by-step guide and every benefit in one place.
See GuessTheDot for the classroomLog in, mark yourself as a teacher, and tap "Create a game for the class." A QR code and join code show up, which you project on the smartboard, students scan or type it in to join. See the step-by-step guide.
Yes, every player needs a free account to join. It takes a few seconds, and there's no paywall behind it.
No, on purpose. A class game is always private and never counts toward the leaderboard, so it stays low-pressure, even for an off round.
Dozens of countries, with capitals, cities, villages and world wonders as separate game modes, plus country hunt. Handy for matching the game to your lesson topic.
No. Creating and playing a class game is completely free, even without a Pro subscription.
Chat messages can be reported and are moderated, and there are no ads. More detail is in Privacy & safety above.
Just start playing, or set up a game for your class right away.